Community Garden Tips

Garden Tips by Master Gardener Sharon Crum

April 20, 2009

Spring is in the air. Again this year we are waiting for the soil to dry enough to plant. Hopefully, that time will be within the next week. This is the time to plan the vegetables you will want to plant for fresh eating all summer.

If you would like onions for winter use, plant smaller sets, which will store better in the fall than larger sets.

Lettuce is a common early crop to plant from seed. Consider planting some spinach for salads also. Each of these will only require two or three feet of space in a row to provide enough produce for a family. They have excellent favor in the cool spring weather. Save enough seed for autumn because you can plant them again in early September.

Vegetables you can plant soon after April 15 would include:

• Potatoes
• Onions
• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Radishes
• Peas
• Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Brussel Sprouts
• Beets

I am a big fan of using newspapers in the garden to keep down weeds. If you are interested in this, begin saving old newspapers. I will tell you more about using them later.

The time is now to begin choosing seed and plants. Find disease-resist varieties. Catalogs may list specific disease resistances. In general, the more diseases a plant or seed is resistant to, the better.

When planting time arrives, it is easy to be excited about planting and forget the amount of work that will be required later. Especially if you are new to gardening, start small with only a few vegetables.

If you have access to a few feet of old fence and a couple of steel posts, think about using it in your garden. Fence works great for growing cucumbers, peas, lima beans, etc to keep the produce off the ground.

Dill is an herb which is annual. It has an interesting odor to enjoy, in addition to culinary use. If some of the plants are allowed to seed, they will fall to the ground and new plants will come up in the fall.

Plants are arriving at garden centers. Resist the temptation to purchase them until a day or two before you intend to plant them. New plants will continue to arrive. If you purchase plants now but are unable to put them in the ground for a couple of weeks the plants will be stressed.

The best time of day to set plants in the ground is early evening or a cloudy day. Dig a hole about six inches deep. Put ½ gallon to one gallon of water in the hole. Set the plant in, however, if the plant is much taller than the hole is deep, lay it horizontally a little. Do not bend because the plant will break. Be sure the leaves are above ground level and not covered with soil.

Cabbage plants of many varieties are available. If you buy one dozen of the same variety of young plants, remember they may all be ready for your table the same week. Consider buying a couple plants of three or four different varieties with various maturity dates. Most seed and plants labels will tell the expected number of days to maturity.

You should rotate plant location each year. Do not plant the same vegetable or family in the same location as the past two years. Basic families are Cole crops (cabbage family): broccoli. Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, rutabaga, turnip. Cucurbits (cucumber family): cucumber, gourd, muskmelon, pumpkin, squash, watermelon. Salanacceous (tomato and potato family): Irish potato, pepper, tomato.

I will explain a time saving tip that I have used for several years for potatoes. After the potatoes are planted and hilled up well, even before they peek through the soil, put several layers of newspapers between the rows (or a layer of straw). If you leave only a couple of inches for the vines to grow, you are also leaving a very small area for weeds to grow. The biggest problem with paper is finding enough compost to hold the papers down. If you are raking your yard, save the leaves, grass, etc. to use to cover the papers.

Are you currently composting at any level? Use a plastic container such as old ice cream bucket to collect all fruit and vegetable waste. Then empty it at the community garden compost site every few days. You may not think you have enough waste to bother with. However, if you empty a one gallon container two times weekly multiplied by 52 weeks each year. That amount seems to make the project totally worthwhile.